SNIA Experts on Data
Listen to interviews with SNIA experts on data who cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies. SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data.
SNIA Experts on Data
Standards Innovations with IEEE and SNIA
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International standards organizations play a crucial role in accelerating the adoption of technology. In this episode, Tom Coughlin, president of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), discusses how standards bodies like SNIA and IEEE shape the global market and its products through multi-vendor collaboration and shared goals. Tom highlights the impact of past standards and the latest advancements in DNA data storage, solid-state storage, and memory. He also provides a personal perspective on the benefits of active involvement in standards organizations and trade associations.
SNIA is an industry organization that develops global standards and delivers vendor-neutral education on technologies related to data. In these interviews, SNIA experts on data cover a wide range of topics on both established and emerging technologies.
About SNIA:
Welcome to the SNEA on Data podcast. Each episode highlights key technologies related to handling and optimizing data.
Speaker 2All right, welcome back everybody to the SNEA Experts on Data podcast. My name is Eric Wright. I'm the co-founder and chief content officer at GTM Delta and the host for the podcast. Co-founder and chief content officer at GTM Delta and the host for the podcast, and I'm very, very pleased and excited to have Tom Coughlin joining us today. We are going to talk today about a really exciting world of standards bodies, where we're seeing great crossover and how innovation is really being driven not just within a standards community but across communities. So with that, tom, I'll let you introduce yourself to folks that are new to you and let's talk all good things around. Snea and IEEE.
Speaker 3Sure, so I'm Tom Coughlin, and part of the reason for doing this is I'm the current president of the IEEE, which is the world's largest technical professional organization, with over 470,000 members in over 190 countries. It's involved in standards. It also has technical societies that govern just about any kind of technology you can think of. They do local activities. Ieee is a major publisher of technical information and it puts on over 2,000 conferences a year, for example. So it's my honor, my privilege, to be able to do that this year.
Speaker 3And personally I've been involved in data storage and memory for about 44 years. I've worked at many companies in this space and the last 20-some years I've actually been consulting and doing all manner of different consulting, from putting on conferences to writing reports in technology and also doing consulting of all different manner. And in the course of doing that I've also been involved with the SNEA as a volunteer in that organization. I think it's somewhere between 15 and 20 years, and before that I was involved with an organization called the International IDEMA, which was a trade association for the hard disk drive industry, for example. So I've been involved in as a volunteer in industry trade associations as well as the IEEE over the course of that time. So I guess I volunteer for a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2You are both prolific and extremely busy and I really appreciate when you see folks that are driving. You know people getting part with these groups where we can actually have a lot of volunteer help and because it's tricky, you know it's maintaining that balance between corporate support in order to fund a lot of the work we do, while maintaining agnosticism across the ecosystem, which is really what was, even within each standards body, an interesting challenge between the different trade associations that are coming together more and more now, as we see, IEEE has probably gone through many changes in the time you've been involved, as has SNEA, so how did you actually come to begin your work with SNEA, Tom?
Speaker 3So I've been involved with SNEA, as I said, for at least 15 years. I was trying to figure out exactly when, but one of the things I was involved in was founding the Solid State Storage Initiative back probably around 2008 or so or 2007, 2008. And I've been involved in that activity as a leader and participant sense, and it's evolved into I think it's a compute memory and storage initiative, csmi today, and that changed a few years ago. I've been involved in SNEA conferences, participating in conferences as speakers, as moderator. I've done webinars with SNEA, many with my colleague, jim Handy. He and I do a report on emerging non-volatile memory reports, for example and also been, of course, involved in storage things with the IEEE as well. So those are some of the activities I've been involved with at SNEA, and I've known about SNEA for even before that, before I was actively engaged with it.
Speaker 2How do you find differences in sort of how each of the associations operate and where you started to see crossover occurring? As you were involved in multiple associations and groups, you were likely starting to say, like I think some of these people should be getting together.
Speaker 3So trade associations or trade groups like SNEA, I think they do valuable work and contributions within their particular field and they can help in terms of, I mean, standards in general, help to make manufacturable products that can have competitors and create a real market, and so trade groups, I think, can play an important role of that within their industry. But also I think that there are interesting connections that can be made between groups that create standards, whether it's an industry standard or making it an international standard, like IEEE does, and there are examples in fact of things that have gone on between SNEA and the IEEE that relate to that and probably future activities that could take that even further.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that's an interesting thing, as you mentioned. So you know, ieee being an international body and likely very different contributing audience, I mean we even find especially a lot of technology user groups and technology communities. We're very North American centric in general and so it must be quite a difference in the type of like how to prepare to release stuff, because we have to think much more about internationalization and language coverage. How does that work as far as IEEE? And have you seen SNEA having sort of more growth around adapting to more international participants and audiences?
Speaker 3Well, snea does have, you know, international presence in, you know, europe and also in Asia, you know so there, there is work going on in there and I think that there are people from those those areas that are involved in their, their industry standards. They do. Ieee, of course, is a big organization and probably even even more international, and we have been doing standards for a very long time and we have been doing standards for a very long time, and some of these standards help define and manage major industries like Wi-Fi standards and the Internet. The standards that make up the function of the Internet are all IEEE standards. So IEEE has a lot of experience and there has been work between IEEE and SNEA on some important standards, one of which is kind of related to sustainability.
Speaker 3There's an activity that came out of folks in SNEA that turned into IEEE standard P2883 in 2022, which was on the sanitization of storage devices, so that they don't so particularly, like I say, a big data center isn't worried about user data being recovered from these devices, so they feel they have to incinerate or burn them and by not having to do that, by being able to get a certifiable sanitization of the storage device, you can either reuse it or resell it Someone else can reuse it or if it is at end of life and you can successfully do the sanitization, then you can recover valuable components from it.
Speaker 3For instance, with hard disk drives, the neodymium iron magnet that's used in the actuator has economic value and could be recycled, reused. So I think that was an interesting example and basically along the lines of creating a circular economy in terms of products made by design engineers, that maybe we can reuse parts, maybe we can extend their life, and this all helps, I think, in terms of sustainability efforts. So that's one example with regard to standards, where I've seen interaction with SNEA folks to create a standard with the IEEE, for example.
Speaker 2Especially when we look at sustainability. I'd say four years ago it really came to the fore. Obviously, we saw climate change became a very strong subject and a lot more around ESG with investing and just general operations. So it was a little bit tough to watch sometimes, especially as I'm a marketer by nature and a technologist as well, and I found that we were sort of over marketing sustainability as this new thing I said. Meanwhile, there's actually had incredible amounts of innovation and practices that have been developed and we don't often think of it in the lens of sustainability, as I said, like just the fact of data placement and being able to do data cleansing and reuse those devices, even reuse within their life cycle but then, as you said, at end of life can we recover as much as possible to feed back to the ecosystem? So it's tough sometimes because we realize we've been doing all these things and it has sustainability on it, but not because we were trying to achieve sustainability. It was almost a side effect, but it's encouraging.
Speaker 3Yeah, and there's some things in IEEE. There's something called e-liability and there's a standard activity that's developing on this and basically that's creating methodology for certifiable carbon content in a supply chain so you could, which would allow you to say just how much carbon was used in making an end product by being able to have a certifiable methodology for detecting that throughout the supply chain. So that's currently getting started in IEEE and certainly, I think, could be a value in the storage industry, as in many other industries as well.
Speaker 2Yeah, especially if we think of when we started with a lot of development of this stuff, especially like SSDs and such, I seem to recall that there was a lot of skepticism around durability and life cycle of these things, but as we saw innovation happening at the software layer and the management layer and stuff that's all the way down to even just you know work with swordfish and and remote operations and overall management, it's very. It's such a boost for us to see that we can do more to unexpectedly extend the life cycle because of hardware. That led to software that led to better hardware. It's, I like it's a bit of a, as you said, a circular ecosystem that it helps to feed back into itself and then that creates new innovation opportunities for folks that come along and say hey, I'm not going to develop hardware, I'm not developing software.
Speaker 2You know, data centers, however, were really good at managing data removal and data placement algorithms. So when we get into memory and storage in combination now, we see the hierarchical storage again coming to the fore of like oh, this is actually very important because we can move things at a pace and speed that we couldn't because of other you know, bus limitations and other things in the past. So that again, I think, extends the use of some of the stuff we thought was probably only going to have a five to eight year life cycle.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think there's a, there's means for extending the use of things. The other thing is a lot of these technologies, all these storage technologies, involve the disciplines which are part of the IEEE. So there's hard disk drives, for example, and you mentioned solid state drives. There's IEEE societies that actually have folks in them that design these things and there's been important conferences and activities that they do. You know where people talk about the roadmaps and where these things can go and, for instance, there is a roadmapping activity in the IEEE that includes semiconductor roadmaps out, say, 15 years, which includes, for instance, memory devices, conventional memory devices like DRAM, nand flash, but also some of the emerging non-volatile memory devices as well. So there's.
Speaker 3So I think you know trade organizations within a technology have value. A lot of that's at the system level and you know implementation level in the industry. A lot of the basic technology development happens through people who would kind of people who would be part of these societies do things in their companies, and some of this stuff would then show up in IEEE conferences and publications, for example. And there's something that I've actually this week I'm actually in Greece right now in Athens and there was a conference put on by the IEEE Information Theory Society and there was a session there this last Monday that was on DNA data storage, organized by the DNA Data Storage Alliance, which is a SNEA organization. So there's cases here where we're seeing SNEA actually playing a role in IEEE conferences as well. So another example of that sort of cross play that you can see between trade groups and in groups like the IEEE. They're based upon technical professions and people that are working actually, you know, working to create new technologies.
Speaker 2The other thing is the practices and sort of, I'll say, the pillars within, whereas it used to be just simply we think of it as hardware efficiency transport, you know, and we look at SNEA is actually reorganized in what they talk about, the different areas of practice, which include acceleration, optimization, transport, and then what was interesting in talking with a lot of the folks is that security was often an afterthought and what has really developed is that things like cross pollination between people that can see, oh, there's actually a security opportunity here where we can start to again introduce that early into the discussion around standards, so that it's not an afterthought and a retrofit for staff. You have to have real good foresight into not just that single line of development, but what else will this affect? That will impact that roadmap.
Speaker 3Well, I think you'll find you know that IEEE has activities that get into security in various ways, from encryption to cybersecurity as well, you know.
Speaker 3And I think the other thing is you find I'm not the only IEEE members who are also involved with SNEA.
Speaker 3There are others as well and people who work in these various parts of the IEEE and also have a role in storage and in SNEA.
Speaker 3So I think it's a really vibrant interplay that can and, I believe, should happen between IEEE, our standards and other activities you know conferences and things of that sort and trade groups in those areas. And actually, as IEEE president, one of my big things that I want to I'm emphasizing that we need to develop this year is stronger engagement with industry, and this is an example of that working with trade associations, trade groups and part of the reason for doing that also is that IEEE we get a lot of student members who don't keep them. Many of those students end up working in industry, and so my top priority actually is getting more of our younger folks, say our student members, to stay with IEEE, and I think part of that is playing a stronger role in industry and being valuable to industry and those involved in the practical applications of technology, and I think interactions like those between a trade group like SNEA and the IEEE in all of its different manifestations can be an example of that.
Speaker 2I think that's such an important piece, really, the human element of what we're doing. Maybe if you could think back on, how has the people you've met along the way impacted your own personal career and what you've been able to bring back now as president to think you've got this beautiful top down, you know opportunity to say let's look across the broad ecosystem, what we're doing today, and pull in years of experience and say what's next right? How do you maintain interest and participation for folks that begin in academia but then they shoot out into commercial opportunities and then often don't find the time to get back? There's such a tight link that can really really help innovation.
Building Valuable Industry Connections
Speaker 3I think so. I think for me personally, the connections I've made through SNEA and also through the IEEE have been invaluable to my career. It's basically what's enabled me to be a consultant, for example, is that the people I know, the people I've met. It also gives me opportunities to be involved in these organizations, to be informed on the latest developments in storage and other technologies as well. And I think that for somebody who works in industry whether you're a consultant or you're an employee or you're starting your own business being plugged in to an industry, having contacts, having connections and having the opportunities to stay on top of what's going on is important to be successful. And so I think being a volunteer and a member of a group like SNEA and or a community like the IEEE can be a crucial element in being successful.
Speaker 3And I think that people that do that can make more valuable employees. I think that people that do that can make more valuable employees, more valuable contributors to society. So by doing some things because you think it's a thing that should be done, not just because you're getting paid I think has a lot of value to one ultimately in your career. So I think I fully advocate that and I think part of it is getting younger folks to realize that there is connections beyond just the social networking and other things they do that can be valuable to them, in particular having personal connections with people, especially people working in their field or in fields that they might want to get involved in in the future as part of their career development in the future as part of their career development.
Speaker 2And that's the thing about I've noticed. I've been involved in a lot of open source communities and even early Linux user groups and doing hardware level user groups and a lot of times I'd be asked why do you go to these things? What's the value you get out of it? It's because you meet birds of a feather, really. It's folks that have similar challenges, maybe have come up with unique and interesting ways in which they take on those challenges, and then just the fact that you're in that room, you just find yourself surrounded by people who are like oh right, I could potentially help somebody else.
Speaker 2And then, as you said, over time I've found legitimate, really deep friendships with people that I've met through industry and then from there then we grow those internal groups and then career opportunities come up, because that is as people look for. Hey, how do I find the right teams and companies that are in the area of study that I want to be and that I already kind of appreciate their ethic and how they approach things? Just the fact that participation in these trade groups, you can see them act and you see how they contribute volunteer time as an organization for their staff and I think that to me that's just immediately. If somebody sends you to a trade group and doesn't really have great expectations of ROI, that they realize the benefit is often intangible but it's real and that tells me a lot about a company in that they will send people towards those opportunities.
Speaker 3Well, and the other thing too and this is something I've been trying to do in the IEEE and basically throughout my career is if I see groups of people that are doing something similar or that they might benefit from interacting with each other. I try to connect people, and I think that helps people to be more effective, or at least helps them in terms of expanding their network and the people they work with and perhaps finding new colleagues and collaborators on projects provide rewarding career opportunities, no matter whether it's, you know, making a fortune or just making something that's extremely useful, or both.
Speaker 2That's it. Yeah, so, looking at from you know, let's think of how do we attract new people or even introduce, you know, growth opportunities for individuals and organizations that are looking at what is SNEA, what is IEEE and how do I participate? What recommendations would you have, Tom, on what it means as an individual contributor and also as a company, in what you can do and gain as being a part of both IEEE and SNEA?
Speaker 3So I think part of it is that.
Speaker 3What is it that could benefit?
Speaker 3First of all, benefit the company in terms of being on top of technologies and, in the case of standards, whether it be with the trade group or with IEEE, helping to shape the industry and the competitive landscape.
Developing Future Leaders in Technology
Speaker 3Helping to shape the industry and the competitive landscape, that it also gives you opportunities to find people who might be employers, maybe collaborators, might be employees, maybe collaborators, you know, who know things and can get things done, and I think it's an opportunity. I think, in particular, that part of the activity needs to be done here and this is what you know an IEEE trying to do is what can we do to bring the younger folks and develop the next cadre of leaders, of those that are knowledgeable and those that are leaders that can help take an organization into the future? And it's something that, again, it's for IEEE. I think it's crucial that we do this for our own survival and maintaining our vitality and pursuing our mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. And for a group like SNEA, I think it's critical for us to stay on top of the latest activities, because younger folks are often tied into that, and giving people a chance to develop their career, their resumes and leading them to new opportunities, so they get value out of being part of that trade association.
Speaker 2The interesting thing when we look at these, they run beautifully as organizations, because there's a marketing edge to it of how do we evangelize what's being done in that community. But it also opens the opportunity for people who are deep tech engineers, learners, builders, who are introverted by nature, and so I think it's such a beautiful chance to have introverts get together and collaborate without it being sort of forced and because it's across organizations. When people are there, they genuinely want to be there, versus like if you're in an internal team thing, you're like, oh boy, we're gonna go do some paintball or whatever, like we try and find ways to excite people about what we're doing in the company, but you're sitting with the same people you'd sit with at lunch every day. Now you can come to these groups and it's like if I worked with this person, I would want to sit with them at lunch every day, and now I can, for you know what? Four or five times a year potentially.
Speaker 3We can learn from each other and you know collecting people. Collecting, you know, colleagues, friends, I think is an important part of one's career in development and you know you mentioned that. You know learning how to. You know introvert to people.
Speaker 3A lot of us who are in these professions, you know they come from more of an introverted nature, more bookish, you know, and I think especially volunteer positions where you can develop leadership skills, opportunities to communicate, learn how to communicate better, written as well as verbal and in general, if you can get people to do things with you and they're not getting paid for doing it, that's a pretty valuable skill and probably translates into you know work and life as well, you know.
Speaker 3So I think there's chances for us to learn from each other, to find the best methods of how to get things done, or at least different methods for getting things done for people to develop their own personal style and to be noticed. You know, because being a volunteer gives you an opportunity to distinguish yourself from those that don't do that kind of activity, and the amount that you can do may depend on many factors where you are in your life. You got a family, you have other responsibilities, but I think it's. It's useful for someone to try to stay plugged in. You know, if you're going to, if you want to continue to be able to, to, to grow and be valuable, you need to need to, uh, you need to take responsibility for uh, uh, staying in the game and working with other people, even if you know your time may be limited. What can you do that could create value, that could contribute to a community and, you know, help to build that association with other people that may help you now and also in the future.
Speaker 2Well, I got to ask one personal question, tom, no-transcript, what you're doing with ieee and snea and such oh, that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 3Um, I can't identify when or how that developed, um, I don't know, maybe it's something I've had for a long time, you know. So I think probably it has been. You know, uh, but know, Maybe it's something I've had for a long time, you know. So I think probably it has been, you know. But I just think it's really important for us to well, part of it is the realization you can't get things done alone unless you got, you know, an awful lot of money. So if you're starting out without an awful lot of money, you basically have to work through other people to get to get to persuade them to help you to do things.
Speaker 3And, um, and I think part of the best way of doing that, if you, you know, if you're paying attention, is listening to other folks and trying to, you know, communicating meaningfully with each other, you know, and so that's uh, I've tried to develop that skill.
Speaker 3My wife says I don't have, maybe not as good at that as I should be, but but otherwise I try to. You know, I'm trying to look at what other people are doing and what the values we could be doing something together, or who are people they could be working with to try to get something more done. And, yeah, I guess that is can be seen as kind of a mentorship thing, but I also see it as kind of like you know, just generally, how do we create our community? You know our, you know our people and you know, even though they're diverse and very different from each other, uh, certainly in the, in the IEEE, it's true, you know, how can we have a sense of community, that we're working together to get some common things done and to do the right thing, you know. So, yeah, maybe that's mentorship. If so, I, you know, I guess it's just something that's developed. If I do some of that, it's probably, you know, something I developed over time and oftentimes, of course, through many mistakes and from not doing exactly right Sometimes.
Speaker 2There's a, a great book and it's. This is going to drive me nuts and I I'll look it up after and I'll be. I'll be angered that I didn't remember who the author was, but it's the idea of like original uh, study in theater and uh, the title is called accidentally on purpose and it is such a great way of like a lot of what we do as communities and groups is that we, we just we think we're doing things just like, ah, I'm just doing it, and then over time you're like you develop personal patterns and you realize like, ah, this is actually a thing that I really appreciate. And volunteering and mentoring, I call them sort of like level level two mentors. They're almost accidental mentors, where just being in your orbit is inspirational and people see that, and then that is not necessarily a full, formal mentor-mentee relationship, but just being in the room, being there at two-day events and one-day events, being there at two-day events and one-day events, we really just sort of capture it through osmosis.
Speaker 2All the stuff that goes on and everybody, when you get back from one of those events, everyone is fired up, like the excitement that people have ending the day After a workday. It's like, oh, close the laptop. Well, we're nerds. We open the laptop back up and start doing personal projects. But you really just want to say I've got to go back to my team at work and show them what we're doing over here and it really just does carry throughout the community.
Speaker 3Yeah, I think you know, and uh, you made me think about uh, ieee does this big honor ceremony. We have medals that we give out. I mean sneha does awards too, you know, for volunteers and people who've made contributions. And ieee think about IEEE does this big honor ceremony? We have medals that we give out I mean SNEA does awards too, you know, for volunteers and people who've made contributions In IEEE. We've got these big medals like our Medal of Honor, and we have a big ceremony. We did one in the beginning of May in Boston. You know where we give out these medals and recognize these people and they make a big deal about it. And Vince Cerf won this last year and his partner in creating TCP IP, bob Kahn, won it this year and they were both there and it was so inspirational to see these two guys still, you know, talking meaningfully and insightfully with each other. You know, after all these years, it was, I mean, that was inspirational.
Speaker 2That's such a beautiful thing. I always say we need like an inside the actor's studio for technologists where we can like really unpack some of those stories, and that's also the benefit, I think, of these groups is that you're meeting people where you're new to the industry, but all this history is in that room, and so when an idea comes up, someone can say like, oh, I remember we did this 10 years ago, five years ago, 25 years ago, and it really does inform a lot of how we develop new things by having more history. I often worry that a brand new person coming out of college today has no understanding of where, how they got there. It's just expected the clouds there, all these things are there and you're like it'd be kind of cool to know the path that got us here because it may inform the path to what's next as we develop it.
Speaker 3Well, I think you know I've always been inspired by biographies of people. You know we're. You know I've always been inspired by biographies of people, you know were, you know, finding out kind of things they were thinking about and how they got to where they were. You know especially folks involved in technology and science, you know. So I think those are inspiring and I think, you know, especially for the younger folks. Well, for all of us really, but for the younger folks, how do you get a sense of what can be? And it's fine to remember the old things you've done before, as long as you say, well, we tried that, it didn't work. We tried that and here were the problems they had at the time. It'd be a better response, right, maybe we should try it again, but what would you do about these problems? You know something like that.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's, but it's great. Well, and I could say, Tom, it's absolutely inspirational. We could talk for hours, I'm sure, on many things. You're a fantastic human and you've been such a strong contributor. So thank you for all you've done for the broader tech community and for IEEE and for SNEA, for the broader tech community and for IEEE and for SNEA and for folks that did want to get involved. Of course, if you don't already know about SNEA, very easy go to sneaorg. You can check out easy ways to get involved as a volunteer. You can get involved in technical working groups and dive in further as you go. It's such a beautiful group of folks. There's more and more events that are coming up, which is great, and, as you mentioned, IEEE lots going on. What's the best way for people to get started with IEEE, Tom?
Speaker 3Well, the general website is IEEEorg, so you can find out there and I you know. I agree, I think being part of SNEA has been very rewarding. I've met some excellent people doing a lot of good work, and likewise in IEEE as well, and, like we talked about before, there's value. But if you're working in industry, there's value in being part of an industry group as well as part of a professional technology group like the IEEE.
Speaker 2It's a future of opportunity, both at the technology and at the career layer, so I'm excited to be a part of it. So there you go. Thank you very much, tom, for sharing your story today, and for folks that want to connect with you, what's the best way that they could do so?
Speaker 3Well, my website is httpps. Ps, uh slash. Well, it's tom coughlincom, let's make it easy I was funny.
Speaker 2I was thinking about that the other day. I remember like we were there at the start of all this and he has like http, colon, forward slash, forward slash, and people are like what is a forward slash? I missed the tilde that was. Uh, we, we taught the world what a tilde was for a few years and then we got away from it with long domain names now. But awesome, well, great. Thank you very much, tom. And for folks, of course, do check out more great conversations like this with the experts on Data Podcast. We've got lots more coming up on the YouTube channel and get involved, more coming up on the YouTube channel and get involved. It's an amazing community of practitioners, folks that not just sharing your love for technology, but the adjacent things we do in our lives. In fact, you find musicians, photographers, people that have volunteer things to do in other ways, and you'd be surprised by how much we all have in common when given the chance to be in a room together.
Speaker 3Indeed, the humans of SNIA are an amazing group.
Speaker 2That it is. That is the podcast alone. I would love to title it that. So thank you very much for your time, Tom.
Speaker 3All right, take care, thank you.
Speaker 1Thank you for listening. For additional information on the material presented in this podcast, be sure and check out our educational library at sniaorg slash library.